As many as 500 Nepalese children have been sold into slavery to Indian circuses over the past year, according to a new report from the Himalayan state.

The estimate, by the Nepali Central Child Welfare Board, shines a light on the misery that lurks behind India’s dilapidated big tops and on the sub-continent’s burgeoning status as a hub for human-trafficking.

Indian circus owners prize young Nepalese girls for their fair skin and “exotic looks” – features also favoured by the pimps who run prostitution rackets that span South Asia and the Middle East.

Impoverished parents in Nepal are paid as little as £10 for their daughters by agents usually linked to powerful organised crime networks, activists say. When they reach India the infant circus performers live in constant fear of the exploits they are forced to perform in the ring, and of the abuse they suffer from their owners backstage.

“Anything on the high wire is terrifying, but the most notorious act is the star kiss, which most girls call the dental trick,” said Philip Holmes, the head of the Esther Benjamins Trust, a charity that has rescued more than 350 Nepalese children from Indian circuses over the past four years.

To perform the trick a young girl grips a rope with her teeth while she is twirled around at ever increasing speed, perhaps 40ft (12 metres) above the circus floor, without a safety net.

Among those compelled to perform the stunt was Kumari Lama, a Nepalese girl who was sold into a small circus in the state of Kerala in south India at the age of 5. The agent who came to her family told Kumari’s desperately poor mother that her daughter would be “treated like a film star”. In fact, she was transported to a sordid life of violence and sexual abuse.

Eleven years later, after being traded between several circus owners, Kumari’s worst fears were realised when she lost her grip during the dental trick to plunge 30ft to the floor.

Despite her losing consciousness and being unable to walk for three months, Kumari’s captors, Raj Mahal, one of India’s biggest circuses, forced her back into the ring.

She finally escaped in June, when Mr Holmes led a raid on the Raj Mahal that freed 17 girls. Since then it has emerged that many of them suffered repeated rapes and beatings. “The circus animals got a better deal than us,” one of the released girls told officials.

Other children have been mauled by tigers in the ring, only to be forced to reenter the ring when their wounds have healed. Many young girls are forced to marry older men to tie them into circus life forever. Often circus owners sell unwanted children into prostitution.

A Nepalese official told The Times that the trade in circus performers was seen as an urgent issue by policy-makers and law enforcers but that it was diminishing in seriousness. A ban on wild animals in Indian circuses has damaged their popularity, he said, and the demand for young performers is drying up gradually.

It is not hard to see why: most of India’s travelling circus troupes are drab and depressing affairs, typically sporting a few bedraggled elephants and a flock of scabby trained parakeets. Meanwhile, India’s affluent middle classes are increasingly turning to cable television, multiplex cinemas and shopping centres for their entertainment.

Activists emphasise, however, that a robust network of small circuses remains in business, especially in the poor northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They add that circuses account for only a tiny proportion of the child-trafficking that takes place through India from Nepal and that the same gangs that traffic circus girls transport sex slaves.

The US State Department highlighted the scale of the problem recently when it underscored India’s status as a leading hub for the trade of humans, ranging from domestic servants to manual labourers and prostitutes. “India is a source, destination and transit country for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation,” a report published in Washington said.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Nepal, those who find and buy girls appear to enjoy the support of influential individuals.

Mr Holmes, who is based in Kathmandu, said: “We are dealing with some major villains. Some very evil, very powerful people.”

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